Yes and No

It’s very tempting to immediately say yes to positive opportunities when presented to us. In contrast, It isn’t always easy to say no, especially to someone more senior than you. 

However, experience has taught me that these words should be used with care as they have the power to significantly impact your wellbeing and career. 

What follows is a description of work situations that I found myself in where saying yes or no resulted in unexpected outcomes and feelings of regret and frustration because I had not carefully considered all the implications beforehand. Here’s my story….

Intro

I have over 20 years experience in tech, predominantly in professional/customer services roles but I have also held sales positions up to the level of Business Development Manager, so I understand both sides of the coin as it were. Full disclosure, whilst the sales side can definitely pay more, the tech side is where my heart lives. At their core, both are essentially problem solving positions. So I’m a problem solver.

The Scene

In a previous role I was asked to step up to manage the team that I was part of for around 3 months whilst the actual manager took some time off due to health issues. This was a very educational experience and truth be told sometimes a very difficult one for various reasons – that’s a separate story. Eventually the manager returned to their role and I received very positive feedback about my performance. This brief stint showed the business that I was capable of effectively managing people so when a situation arose where a small team were in need of a manager, they asked me to step up to this role on a probationary basis with a view to formally promoting me if all went well. Long story short, all went well and a few months later I was promoted, but in title only as the business said that there was no budget for a pay rise at that time. Sound annoying? It was.

Saying Yes

I am very much of the mind that we should all reflect on our actions and hold ourselves accountable, to varying degrees, for the outcomes of those actions. So whilst I was annoyed at not getting a pay rise for the added responsibility and work that I had been given, I was also acutely aware that I was the one who had said yes to accepting both, without stipulating that financial remuneration was a requirement. Yes, I just assumed that me getting a raise was ‘understood’, and we all know what Oscar Wilde said happens when you assume.

Nevertheless, I know that when a business values an employee they will generally do what is required to assure mutual satisfaction. At this point I was no longer sure that the business valued me so when one of the members of my team asked for a well deserved promotion I saw an opportunity to both say yes to this request and to get an answer of sorts to my question as to whether the business still valued me. I made the argument for this team member to get a promotion, which included a pay rise, and after a bit of back and forth the business agreed. So laid bare in front of me was my answer, there was no budget for me to get a pay rise but there was for a member of my team, not great. However, I truly believe that the answer that I got was not personal and so I did not take it personally at all. Instead I simply decided that this was a sign to me that it was time to move on, so I did. 

Saying No

Now when the company got my formal resignation letter a little bit of hell (but not all) broke loose. A VP, a Director and even the CEO reached out to me. I made it very clear that my mind was made up to leave but that there were no hard feelings, and I was even very candid with the business about the test that I had carried out. Coincidentally I had been looking for about a 10% salary increase and as part of their efforts to keep me, one of the things that they did was to offer me a role in a different department that included a 45% increase. Joni Mitchell appears to have been right. “No”. That was the polite but firm response that I gave to all attempts at getting me to stay. My belief is that whether by accident or purposely they refused to see my value until I decided to leave and so staying, for me, would have been a bad move, irrespective of how much they offered (within reason). 

I’m working on getting myself into a position where saying no is as comfortable to me as saying yes – that includes saying no to myself. What I mean by that from a professional perspective is, for instance, stopping yourself from taking unnecessary actions. For example, when something undesirable happens, instead of reacting instinctually by fighting back, pick your battles, as not every battle is worth the fight or cost. It’s worth remembering that as in actual warfare, too many battles can have you spread so thinly that you ultimately lose the war.

In Summary

I have learnt that I can manage both larger and smaller teams, which is a great thing to know about myself but I would not have learned this if I had not said yes. 

My other takeaway from that situation is that saying yes can and often should, come with strings attached. Absolutely express the gratitude that you feel for being given opportunities; however, you should also consider how the business will benefit if you’re successful, and therefore in agreement with them, come up with ways to both measure and reward your success. If we allow for the Hermetic principle of polarity this does also mean that you would need to come up with ways to deal with failure. The lesson here is to be sure enough of your abilities that failure to succeed would be highly unlikely.

I’ve also come to a better understanding that in business you generally shouldn’t take things personally. Of course the business is going to try to get as much out of you for as little as possible, but if you take this personally it will almost certainly affect your ability to respond in a clear minded and balanced way.

There’s a lesson to be had with every YES and every NO. Learn and show gratitude for the lesson as this new experience will help you better understand yourself, your environment and the potential impact of future yes/no decisions. 

Saying yes is great, especially when it is with regards to an opportunity but remember that there are some consequences to saying yes that may impact you negatively depending on your circumstances, such as;

• Increased workload
• More stress
• Less time with family

Likewise, given that saying no can often be seen as preserving the status quo we must be careful not to say no too often as doing this can unwittingly set off a form of decay in your own professional life. Life doesn’t stand still, so if you constantly say no in an effort to keep things ‘the same’ for you, your ‘stillness’ when measured against the constant movement of life will actually look like you’re going backwards.

Balance is the key, knowing when to say yes and when to say no. I suspect that I will continue to learn this right up to the moment that I say yes to that final embrace that awaits us all.